Forced Christian conversion extinguished Islam among enslaved African Americans

Evidence

Indeed, American slave owners prohibited their Muslim slaves from practicing their religion while forcing them to convert to Christianity. American Orientalism was also manifested in literature and art. As early as 1776, Thomas Paine’s best-seller, Common Sense, situated Islam as a foil for his vision of an American Republic based on reason and liberty, not superstition and monarchy. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 516 (#expands, via linked claim)

As more African Americans were targets of racial violence and experienced racism in employment, housing, education, and public accommodations, the newly founded Nation of Islam and the Moorish Science Temple drew from parts of Islamic doctrine to advocate for Black nationalism. Noble Drew Ali, born Timothy Drew, established the first Moorish Temple in Newark, New Jersey, in 1913. Drew Ali proclaimed that African Americans were “an olive-skinned Asiatic people who were the descendants of Moroccans.” He called on African Americans to abandon their Christian slave identities, claiming they were ancestrally Muslim Moors, not Negroes. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 587 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Religious conversion made slaveholders more cruel, not less — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 246; African Muslim slaves preserved Islam until Protestant abolitionism pulled them into Christianity; Full assimilation in antebellum America demanded converting away from Islam (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Slave owners suppressed Muslim slaves’ religion while forcing Christian conversion #expands (0.92) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 516
• Black nationalist Islamic movements rejected Christian slave identity as a liberation strategy #complicates (0.80) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 587